NASA will attempt to repeat history as they prepare to send humans to the moon once again under the Artemis program. The moon exploration mission has been set for 2024, but it might be delayed because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the challenges, NASA revealed the plan to build the first-ever Moon Base Camp.
NASA reveals the design of 1st "Moon Base Camp" for 2024 lunar expedition
According to an India Times article, NASA shared in a 13-page report how the US space agency plans to build the "Moon Base Camp" for their future Moon explorations. The Artemis program will be handling the space expeditions by the International Space Station in the future. Artemis will launch space missions in 2024, allowing humans to land on the Moon once more.
One of the important factors for future manned missions to the moon is to build base camps and perform daily operations on selected parts of the moon. According to NASA, the "Artemis Base Camp" will be developed at the South Pole of the Moon. Once the astronauts are on the Moon's surface, the base camp that will be built will allow them to say there from 7 to 45 days.
Astronauts will use the LTV or "Lunar Terrain Vehicle" for their long trips serving as their habitable mobility-platform whenever they leave the Artemis Base Camp on the lunar South Pole. NASA also plans to build additional supporting-infrastructure at the base camp such as communications facilities, power structures, a landing pad, a radiation shield, storage planning structures, and also a waste disposal system.
These will be built for extended use in the coming decades and missions on the Moon's surface. The Artemis Base Camp will also serve as a training ground of the astronauts before they conduct another space exploration to and from Mars.
How can astronauts' urine be used as a key material for the moon base camp?
According to another report from the Indian Times, a team of European scientists has found a way to use the urine of astronauts as a key material to build the moon base camp. The research conducted by the group of scientists from Norway, Spain, the Netherlands, and Italy, stated that astronauts' urine can be used as raw material to build the concrete structure of the base camp.
The main purpose of the research was to lower the cost of the project because transporting 0.45 kilograms of material from Earth to the moon will certainly be costly. The first question encountered by the researchers is how to extract urea from urine. It is a molecule that breaks hydrogen bonds, reducing the viscosities of many aqueous mixtures. According to one of the scientists, urea can be helpful for the mixture that will be used to build the concrete, and extracting it is not necessary since it can be mixed with the water available on the moon.
"We have not yet investigated how the urea would be extracted from the urine, as we are assessing whether this would really be necessary because perhaps its other components could also be used to form the geopolymer concrete," said Anna-Lena Kjoniksen, said one of the scientists from Norwegian University.
